onsider how far the contents of these papers may be
communicated to the Count de Montmorin, and his influence be asked with
the court of Madrid. France will be called into the war, as an ally, and
not on any pretence of the quarrel being in any degree her own. She may
reasonably require, then, that Spain should do every thing which depends
on her, to lessen the number of her enemies. She cannot doubt that we
shall be of that number, if she does not yield our right to the common
use of the Mississippi, and the means of using and securing it. You will
observe, we state in general the necessity, not only of our having a
port near the mouth of the river (without which we could make no use
of the navigation at all), but of its being so well separated from the
territories of Spain and her jurisdiction, as not to engender daily
disputes and broils between us. It is certain, that if Spain were to
retain any jurisdiction over our entrepot, her officers would abuse that
jurisdiction, and our people would abuse their privileges in it. Both
parties must foresee this, and that it will end in war. Hence the
necessity of a well defined separation. Nature has decided what shall be
the geography of that in the end, whatever it might be in the beginning,
by cutting off from the adjacent countries of Florida and Louisiana, and
enclosing between two of its channels, a long and narrow slip of land,
called the Island of New Orleans. The idea of ceding this could not be
hazarded to Spain, in the first step: it would be too disagreeable at
first view; because this island, with its town, constitutes, at present,
their principal settlement in that part of their dominions, containing
about ten thousand white inhabitants of every age and sex. Reason and
events, however, may, by little and little, familiarize them to it. That
we have a right to some spot as an entrepot for our commerce, may be at
once affirmed. The expediency, too, may be expressed, of so locating it
as to cut off the source of future quarrels and wars. A disinterested
eye looking on a map, will remark how conveniently this tongue of land
is formed for the purpose; the Iberville and Amite channel offering a
good boundary and convenient outlet, on the one side, for Florida, and
the main channel an equally good boundary and outlet, on the other side,
for Louisiana; while the slip of land between is almost entirely morass
or sandbank; the whole of it lower than the water of the river, in